IIT Kharagpur has joined hands with Pepperdine University of the United States for technological knowledge exchange.

The collaboration with Pepperdine, globally known for its Venture Capital-backed entrepreneurial ventures, will boost the entrepreneurship initiative at IITKGP, an IITKGP statement said on Wednesday.

Referring to the latest PitchBook report on top universities producing VC-backed entrepreneurs, workshop faculty member and coordinator of the programme Dr PK Dan said, “Pepperdine MBA ranks 25th where universities like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, INSEAD or Carnegie Mellon are also listed and such collaborative initiatives will benefit our students.”

PitchBook Universities’ report ranks programmes in the US that produce the most venture-backed entrepreneurs in a year.

IITKGP Director Prof Partha Pratim Chakrabarti recently met the US-based team and urged the group to prepare a roadmap for continued collaborative activities.

Prof. Larry Cox, a faculty member at Pepperdine, conducted a workshop on entrepreneurship promotion along with his associates at Entrepreneur Institute Inc recently, the statement said.

The workshop was jointly held with the Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship (RMSoEE) at IITKGP and the upcoming Research Park of IITKGP in Kolkata.

It focused on product engineering, reverse-forward engineering and rapid prototyping.

Prof. Partha Pratim Das, who also leads the Research Park project, said “these workshops are the precursors to the future activities of the research park.”

Prof. Larry Cox said, “Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management is very pleased to be collaborating with RMSoEE, IIT Kharagpur to strengthen both our educational offerings with regard to technology entrepreneurship.”

“We believe that the Graziadio School’s unique approach to ‘entrepreneurship as creative problem solving’ in combination with the RMSoEE’s world class technical expertise will produce powerful student-based businesses in both the institutions,” Cox said.

As a first step, the Graziadio School is planning to host 10 RMSoEE students at its Malibu Campus for a week of entrepreneurship training in the summer of 2018, followed by a 7-week internship.